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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4797 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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Why is there a groping scene in the show? For the male viewers to get their thrills. Which is fine, that's what these shows are about, but expecting women to watch it and go "nope, nothing to see here" is a bit much.

Okay, but... why?

Put it this way: you're entitled to dislike fan service. You're entitled to disdain the male gaze. You're entitled to not be interested in shows that exist to please men.

But you are arguing two contradictory things:

  1. "It's fine."
  2. "You shouldn't expect a woman to just sit there and not complain about it."

Like, if you genuinely believe that it's "fine" for some shows to featuring boobs and butts and groping and fan service, why is it "too much" to expect a woman to watch it without going off?

Now, if she was compelled/tricked/reluctantly dragged into watching it, or had no idea what sort of show it was and was enjoying it until the sudden fan service, okay, I can see some hard eye rolls, but I'm going to be honest, I don't think you (or most women) are "fine" with shows like that. You just sort of grudgingly tolerate their existence.

(FWIW, I have never seen Berserk and am not much into anime nowadays. Just sayin', as much as I dislike the seething hatred that sweats out of some of our He-Man Wimmin-Haters, they aren't completely wrong that a lot of media just gets outright snipped for the horrific crime of... being appealing to men.)

Okay, further explanation has demonstrated that that particular scene wasn't just about titillation. But it's the Battle Lingerie trope that is responsible for the eye-rolling. Some games etc. do put it in For The Guyz. And okay, we have to accept that. But it's not realistic, and it's not there for any reason other than "male sexuality is really easy to unlock, just boobs'n'butts". (The zeppelin boobs and impossibly chunky thighs are the turn off for women watching).

God bless Torchlight, lo these many years past now, where I played as a female character (can't remember if it was engineer or what) and mine eyes did widen and gaze aghast as I got a better piece of gear that was less coverage for my character. I remember swapping the gear on and off, and yep the stats for armour etc. got better and yep the battlekini got skimpier.

The corresponding male character was covered from goggles to bootsoles, so it was even sillier. So if I wanted to play the game, I played as a male character because yes, I know it's fantasy vidya games but there are some absurdities that just break immersion.

I'm not going to complain about guys liking the female characters in games to be zeppelin boobs running around the battlefield in high heels, but I'm also not going to pretend it's not what it is. Though let's hear it for gender-equitable armour!

I'd argue that if a female character has comically big boobs and/or a comically skimpy outfit then it's done for the comic effect.

Maybe this is generalizing, but I suspect that the vast majority of women in committed relationships are turned off by their men showing sexual interest in other women.

But I doubt it explains the phenomenon I suspect is observable here, which I think is relatively recent.

The phenomenon I seek to explain is:

Why "It's fine" for a guy to like fanservice.

Why "You shouldn't expect a woman to just sit there and not complain about it."

Disagree; dread game is a PUA staple.

That doesn't mean a woman likes it. A thing might make a woman behave temporarily in a way you like but that does not mean that she is content and happy, nor does she like the thing that triggered the change.

Or is everyone interpreting "turned off" as literal sexual arousal and not the general "I hate this and want to turn my head from this, not look at it, feel disgusted by this" way?

Offended and insulted, rather than necessarily turned off.

Turned off by their men showing sexual interest in other women in a low-status way, definitely. And slow-mo replay of the shower scene in an anime is as low-status as it gets.

But slow-mo replay of shower scenes in kdramas are a-okay! A man being offended by his girlfriend ogling at another dude's abs is also low-status, apparently. I'll reiterate @Botond173 that goonerbait targeting the female gaze is freely celebrated, and the expectation that men should "suffer" through it to make their girlfriends happy seems to be norm in many, many relationships. At least, in the west.

And also in South Korea presumably.

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